The present invention relates to the field of electronics, and more particularly to a keyboard, a driving method and an assembling method for the keyboard, and an electronic device.
The conventional keyboard comprises keycaps and soft rubber pads supporting the key caps. When a user presses a key, the rubber pad is compressed and the keycap is depressed; when the user releases the key, the rubber pad pushes the keycap back to the initial position.
The soft rubber pad is generally designed to have a tower shape, which is pressed by different distances with different key-press forces. As shown in FIG. 1, the X axis represents for the key-press stroke and the Y axis for the key-press force. At the beginning of pressing, greater key-press forces are required; in the middle of the stroke of the keycap, the key-press forces gradually reduce; and the key-press forces rapidly increase when the keycap reaches its lowest position, where the user may sense the completion of the press action thus releases the pressing finger. The soft rubber pad is widely used for its low cost and pleasant touch feels, but is prone to aging. Over an extended period of time, the texture of the rubber is likely to change, leading to a poor hand feeling or even such that it may not be used any more.
A magnetic keyboard, which comprises two magnets with ends having the same polarity opposing each other and supports the keycap by the mutual repulsiveness between the magnets, has been proposed to prolong the service life of the keyboard greatly. However, the magnetic keyboard lacks good hand feel while being used. FIG. 1 also shows the change of the key-press force (Y axis) along with the key-press stroke (X axis) when the magnetic keyboard is used. As shown in FIG. 1, the key-press force increases monotonously with the key-press stroke, causing hard hand feel, far less pleasant than that of the soft rubber pad keyboard. That explains why the magnetic keyboard is not widely used.
On the other hand, the rapid development of the portable electronic devices brings new challenge to the volume and the hand feel of the keyboard, which is desired to become thinner, smaller and better to touch.
Normally, the stacked thickness of keyboard hinders the development of a smaller and thinner electronic device. Even if each component of the existing keyboard is made to be extremely thin, the height of the keyboard may not be dramatically changed due to the thickness limitation of the material. Furthermore, the ultrathin materials for the components of the keyboard also affect the hand feel of the keyboard.
Therefore, it is desired to provide a new keyboard design which can provide prolonged service life and good hand feel.
In addition, it is also desired to provide a thin keyboard with good touch feel.